Acute cerebral vascular impairment (usually referred to as a cerebral vascular accident) and vertebra impairment usually cause lower limb paralysis. The paralysis of a lower limb usually leads to joint stiffness and muscle atrophy at the hip joint, knee joint and ankle joint due to the lack of passive joint motion, which may even cause bed sores if the patient has been lying down in bed for a very long time. Thus, it is desirable to provide proper physical rehabilitation before the situation becomes worse.
However, due to the lack of rehabilitation personnel, most patients are not given sufficient rehabilitation treatment. As a consequence their lower limbs may be disabled and the patient may no longer be able to adapt himself or herself to his/her family and social life. This will give the patient's family and society in general heavy burden.
The current mechanical rehabilitation device performs only simple bending and extension/retraction exercises for the lower limb. It is not able to facilitate rotation motion for the hip joint, the knee joint and the ankle joint. Thus, as the muscle and joint of the patient's lower limb may not be fully exercised, and the function may be getting worse, the effectiveness of the conventional rehabilitation devices is very limited. Thus, the conventional rehabilitation device can not replace manual rehabilitation effectively.
Due to the above reasons, it is desirable to have a rehabilitation apparatus that possesses full rehabilitation function in order to replace manual rehabilitation. By using mechanical means to replace manual rehabilitation in performing periodic and regular exercise on the above-mentioned joints will reduce the occurrence of bed sores and muscle atrophy and will thus be of great help to the patient and his or her family.